Forum For You

Today our modified website and controversial Free Speech Forum is being surreptitiously launched. Fanfare just doesn't seem appropriate since we're still tweaking some of the goofy icons that came with the initial template. Who would'a thunk that making a movie could be such an educational experience? On top of learning FCP by the seat of our pants, we've now become second-rate amateur website builders as well. Ha!

We went to a SAG-related screening last week to see a documentary about George McGovern's run for the presidency back in 1972. It's called "One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern" from filmmaker Stephen Vittoria. After the 125 minute film, we hung around for the informative Q&A session. Seeing another documentary with such a long running time, we wondered why we killed ourselves editing ours down from 105 to 84 minutes. Anyway, the movie was inspirational on many levels. Not only was it a history lesson, but it was a sad reminder that McGovern was a rare breed - a candidate with tremendous integrity, truly for the people. Based on the response of the audience, it's clear that there is an audience hungry for material like our film. America is ready! The question is - are we?

So come celebrate the Ides of March of the Penguins, and be opinionated to your heart's content. Of course, we do ask that you observe a modicum of decorum at our Free Speech Forum, but don't get carried away with political correctness on our account.

Better Late Than Never

The edit is 99% done. Our movie is down to 84 minutes. We need to watch it once more stem to stern, make sure color corrections are consistent, do an ADR tweak on two final thought segments, possibly lay down some ambient sound or quiet score beneath certain moments. Then it'll be time to export to a DVD, cut a trailer to put on the web, and start submitting to film festivals.

We're also about to launch our exciting Free Speech Forum, once we muddle through the template, style sheet and HTML nightmare. We're also brainstorming a better name for the Forum, in case it takes on a life of its own beyond the film.

All in all, we've been immensely productive in 2006 so far. Perhaps it was the inspiration of George Clooney's "Good Night, Good Luck," that has spurred us toward action. Perhaps it was Alec Baldwin's blog at The Huffington Post in which he called Cheney an "oil thieving whore" that reminded us that we're on the right track.

With a Gubernatorial election coming in California, we all need to get off our collective butts and make sure that Ah-nold doesn't get any more time in office. Verstehen sie?

Now Cut That Out!

Timing is everything. Literally. It seems that a lot of topics explored in our movie have recently been in the news, e.g. gay marriage and the UK's Civil Partnership Act (Elton John's wedding, endorsed by Donald Trump), assisted suicide rights (first Terri Schiavo, and now the Oregon law being upheld by the Supreme Court), the legalization of medical marijuana, and more.

Although we all had a lot to say in our film... we, as filmmakers, have decided that less is more. So we've been going through the painstaking process of "killing the baby" (no, that is not an abortion reference). In editing, the phrase refers to losing dialogue and/or scenes that either slow down the pace, bring it to a screeching halt, don't move the story along, or are redundant. As such, we have now refined the piece down to a crisp, tight, insightful 85 minutes. Yes, we had to lose the special effects and car chase sequences, but there are enough movies giving you that anyway. We wanted to give you something different... and we believe we have.

Another part of the delay in getting this movie out has been its entrapment in computer hell. We had been editing it in FCP HD on our Mac setup. For some reason, certain sequences became corrupted. (How did those politicians manage to infiltrate the project?) There were audio pops that mysteriously appeared. Troubleshooting that took months of research, attempts and failures until conquering those little bastards. When trying to export the project, sequences with motion or filters were uncooperative, again, hindering our attempts to get the damned thing done. Since before the shoot, this project has been an aberration, a comedy of errors, a thorn in our side, and many other cliched metaphors... and yet we refuse to admit defeat.

What our movie has to say is relevant, forever timely, and worthy of consideration. Therefore we will continue to plug along with the goal being theatrical distribution, DVD release, and hopefully positive cashflow toward another socially conscious project. Even though our attempt to get this movie completed did not prevail before the 2004 election and somehow the nation re-elected Bush (please explain that to us!), the beauty of the political process is that there will always be more elections. There will always be corrupt politicians. There will always be social issues that need reform. And there will always be filmmakers and people like us who believe that our voices can - and will - make a difference.

Burned at Both Ends (Archives 11.2.04)

Interesting developments. First we discovered that the package we sent to Harpo Productions never made it to Oprah, even though she requested it in the first place. It was intercepted by an intern who took it upon herself to never even relay our phone messages. One time we called and asked for this intern (who claimed to be the assistant), and we were told that no one by that name worked there. Yet with the next call, that intern answered again and gave us her canned response. When we finally got the real assistant on the phone on November 1, it was too late. The election was the next day and the timeliness of doing a story about our film was pointless. The package was sent back to us by the assistant, with a letter worded in such a way that still ignored the fact that Oprah had asked to see our movie. Of course, this is the way we would prefer to perceive the situation, because if Oprah was truly yanking our chain, then that would shatter the illusions we had of this beneficent woman.

We were up until 5am putting together a rough cut DVD, designing a DVD jacket, and waiting for a courier to pick up the package to whisk it to the airport. Obviously all of that effort was for naught thanks to the powers that wannabe. The other piece of news was our discovery that Paramount Studios had somehow taken an interest in our movie; so much so that people from the studio seemed to be monitoring our website very closely. There were hits almost every day emanating from Paramount's web servers, which made us wonder - if they were so interested, why didn't they call us in for a meeting? It was also relevant to note that a monster law firm that specializes in intellectual property (and appears to represent Paramount) had also been watching our site. And on went the saga. Just one more tale of woe from the indie filmmaker toolbox.

Blowing Smoke (Archives 11.1.04)

We were hesitant to talk about this, for fear of jinxing a possible coup, but now that it appears someone was just blowing smoke up our proverbial asses, we might as well let the hot air out of the bag. We had a bit of short-lived excitement as Hollywood (or should we say, Chicago) played with our heads for a few weeks.

One of our cast members had received a phone call from a major player in the world of daytime television. Now, we don't mean to harp on this, but this person has the power to bring national attention to someone just with a simple endorsement. So anyway, O great one had read a column written by our friend in which he had called this person to task for failing to avail herself of her power to reach America, such as urging her viewing audience to participate in the political process by voting. This media mogul wanted to know what our friend had in mind.

In the course of their conversation, our movie came up, and a media relations rep asked for a copy of our movie as soon as possible. There was supposedly interest in doing a pre-election show about voting, which tied directly into our movie. Of course, it is well known in Hollywood that when someone wants something quickly, they usually sit on it for months. You see, it's not that they really want it. It's just that they don't want anyone else to have it.

Nevertheless, we shipped a rough DVD off in a same-day costly courier across 1000 miles, so they would have it before the weekend. Little did we suspect that no one would even look at until the following week. Each of our followup calls was greeted with the same response - "someone" is looking at it - and "someone" will call you back. When we asked who the "someone" was, the response was, "I don't know."

At this point, we doubt this opportunity will result in exposure, but such is the game. Queries to the media for possible reviews were equally enlightening. Did you know that newspapers and radio stations only want to review your movie if you buy advertising time or space? So much for the free press! Our experiences so far only strengthen our resolve. This is a grass roots movie, made by the people and for the people.